Ontology

There is a particular type of argument called the Ontological (ontology being the study of truth and reality in all their forms) Argument which may seem misleadingly convincing because of its complexity. The logical flow follows:

1. A thing is greater if it is real.
2. God exists in the mind at the very least, everyone can think of God.
3. God is the greatest thing possible.
4. God must therefore be real, as if he were not real, he could not be as great as possible.

To some more clear-headed and logical thinkers, this argument may seem already intuitively flawed, but let’s take a look at why this argument does not hold up to scrutiny.

First let’s check out that number 1. First, is a thing really greater if it is real? Why? Many philosophers have taken this to be a transparently narcissistic and human view. Humans seek to justify why their reality is the greatest it can possibly be, but this view really has no warrants to back it up.

Second, this is a very shady characterization of what is great. We must first seek to define greatness before we can apply it. However, every single definition used in the context of the ontological argument has been different, so we can’t really accept this as a valid argument at all.

Third, we must also question whether or not we can ever really apply “reality” as a construct. Because the study of what is real and what is not is a completely different branch of philosophy, I shall not enter it here, but suffice it to say that it cannot really be properly applied without a very specific definition. For instance, Existentialism denies any objective truths, so reality, perception, and imagination can be taken to be basically the same in application to ontology.

Now the number 2. What is thinking of God? What exactly constitutes thinking of God? It has long been held that humans cannot conceive of infinity, it is just too big. Is it then reasonable to expect that people can think of a being who has infinite capacity in any direction?

On to number 3! Why is God necessarily the greatest thing possible?

How about number 4? First, if this seems intuitively wrong, you are right, it is. This argument could be extended to say: “everyone can conceive of an ultimate something that could destroy the earth in the most efficient way possible, something could destroy the earth a lot better if it was actually real, therefore the earth has already been destroyed.”

QED, yeah?